Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Pittsburgh, Meet Jersey City

Sound familiar?:

From yesterday's USA Today (article by Rick Hampson):
"Once, this was a city of browns and grays. Railroads owned a third of the land, and trains rumbled night and day to the cacophonous riverfront. Factories belched fumes and leaked chemicals. 'Nobody cared,' says Bob Leach, born here in 1937. 'Smoke meant jobs.'

"And those were the good years. Then, in the 1960s, the railroads went broke. Rail yards were abandoned, piers rotted, factories closed. In the 1970s alone, the city lost 14% of its population and about 9% of its jobs.

"Now Jersey City has come back as its own antithesis: clean, green and growing ....

"Once written off by the rest of the nation as another Rust Belt failure, Jersey City is now seen as instructional."

Read More: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-15-jersey-city_N.htm

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